5 things we've learned in our first year getting sales on Etsy
How we've built our Black owned Etsy Shop
Disclaimer: We'd be the first to tell you that we're not top tier sellers on Etsy in terms of sales or revenue. There's people out there pulling in six figures or more on the platform and we know that. What we have is a small black owned Etsy shop that is finally hitting its stride after several years of not getting any sales at all. This year, we've pulled in almost 200 sales in the past few months by changing up a few things and actually abiding by the platform's best practices. So if you'd like to sell on Etsy, here are a few things we've learned that may be able to help you.
Establish your narrative
In our course for bloggers, you hear this word a lot. Narrative. It's one thing to create merch and throw it online but really anyone can do that. Whether people know it or not, what they're really paying for is the narrative behind the brand. Think of Nike and the decades of victory and excellence attached to it. Or Supreme and the youthful lawlessness of the brand. If either of those brands were to launch without some kind of unifying vision that people can get behind, they'd be just another random brand. On a much (much, much) smaller scale, our shop is about black creatives, black artists etc. Before this year, we use to simply upload products, but now we make sure to add in that Gritty Vibes is a black owned Etsy Shop that helps fund Grittyvibes.com, a top platform for black creativity. That way, if people vibe with that, they may be more likely to support us.
Expand! And upload products regularly
Much like the best practices for social media, consistency is key for your shop. If you'd like to grow on the platform, and actually sell on Etsy, continuing to upload products is helpful. Last year, we had only a few t-shirts listed in our shop. This year, we decided to expand into everything from pillows to phone cases, canvas prints and more. We stick to the theme of our shop and put out products that we think would provide value. If we get a good response, we make more products that are similar. Keep in mind that our advice isn't the law or anything. There are plenty of successful shops which only have a few products. We have noticed that the majority of successful shops are consistent and produce a variety of products, all within the same niche.
Take advantage of tags and keywords
Can't lie, we slept on Etsy keywords when we were just getting started. While it's well known that they were important, we recently peeped just how important they are when we began using them with intention. There are platforms out there that will help you find the best tags for Etsy, and incorporating them in your listings is absolutely vital to compete with the big guys. We teach the art of keywords in our course, and we now take the same approach that we'd use with keywords for blogging, as we would on Etsy shop. In short, you wanna use high quality keywords with low competition. When you find that sweet spot of a regularly searched keyword that not too many others are using, you've found your match. If there is too much competition for your keyword, try getting even more specific when adding tags or keywords to your title. In addition to tags, product titles on Etsy are also really important as well.
Imagery is key
This is something we're still learning, and most of our products are still online mockups out of sheer necessity. For the products we have been able to photograph properly, we see the difference in engagement from potential customers for sure. At the end of the day, Etsy as a platform is intended for products that are handmade or unique, so taking photos and presenting your products in a distinct way is an automatic advantage. We try to show off our products in a way that reinforces our niche. Since we're black owned, our photos usually showcase black folks living carefree in our merch. Granted, our items are intended for everyone, but we stay on brand with the way the we present and communicate our items to the world.
Have Fun!
When we started viewing Etsy as simply another platform to have fun and express ourselves, it made it easy to be consistent. Focus on creating and selling products that you genuinely like and would want even if it didn't come from you. There is definitely a group of people out there with similar taste that will engage with it as well. It may not be a large group at first, but with a combination of consistency, good customer service and quality products, you will eventually start to see your hard work pay off. Best of luck!